As I Was Saying is a forum for a variety of perspectives to foster faith-related conversations among our readers with the goal of mutual learning, even in disagreement. Apart from articles written by editorial staff, these perspectives do not necessarily reflect the views of The Banner.
One crisp Friday morning last year, after dropping my son off at school, I popped up into the Oakland hills for my weekly prayer hike. Starting up the West Ridge trail, I began talking with God, but it was hard. My thoughts and feelings were a jumbled pile of laundry right out of the dryer. I need to sort through them, pay attention to each fresh ache and idea.
So I prayed through a template. And naturally, I reached for Psalm 23.
It’s the Psalm our family prays together at the beginning of every Sabbath dinner. So it was the easiest Psalm to call to my mind that day. I made each line my own personal prayer.
The Lord is my shepherd: “Father, you have always provided for me. I’m as helpless as a sheep in the wilderness without you.”
I lack nothing: “Lord, how can my friends, who have just lost everything in the L.A. fires, pray this prayer?”
On and on I prayed. Very quickly, I realized that this timeless poem, cross-stitched on many a pillow, contains far more than sentimental images of life with God.
It held pleasure in the Lord’s presence and the deepest pains of my life. It held the hostility of the world and lavishly appointed tables. It held death and life, ashes and green pastures. In a word: Lent.
Lent is a 40-day season in the Christian calendar that leads us from Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18 this year) to Easter. It connects us to Jesus’ suffering and the suffering of our world, intensifying our longing for new life before the resurrection rescue of Easter.
If you are in a season of struggle, Lent connects your struggle to Jesus’ own struggle.
If you are experiencing an outbreak of temptation, Lenten reflection on Jesus’ temptations can be medicinal.
If grief is a language you have the unfortunate opportunity to learn right now, Lent is a primer in its vocabulary and grammar.
And if you feel like you have everything you need, and yet you wonder if there is more to life, Lent reminds you of and connects you to the struggles of the marginalized, the mourning, and the meek. Paradoxically, you find that getting close to the pain of the world—to death in its various forms—brings you closer to the life of God.
Psalm 23, perhaps the world’s most famous poem, speaks the Lenten language of struggle, grief and death. But it speaks them to the drumbeat of God’s sufficiency and the rhythm of grace. As we walk with Psalm 23 through the valley of the shadow of death—the valley of Lent—we find its words are a rod to guide and a staff to comfort.
In his book, Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23, Dallas Willard wrote, “Unfortunately, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ is a sentiment carved on tombstones more often than a reality written in lives.” But the simple practice of praying this psalm every day for 40 days can change that.
I’ve sat at dinner tables and death beds uttering this picture of life with God, and each time it pulls back the curtain of heaven to reveal what God is really like.
The Lord is the type of Shepherd who makes me lie down and restores my soul before guiding me in right paths.
The Lord is the type of host who makes a lavish table for me and my enemies.
The Lord is the type of Father who chases me with his love and goodness my whole life long.
When we see this picture of God, day in and day out, it starts to become the reality in which we live. That’s why I would encourage you to take up Psalm 23 as your prayer template for Lent. That’s why I wrote a daily devotional to support Christians in that effort. So that we could write the reality of The Good Shepherd on our lives, not just our tombstones.
And as you do, my sincere hope is that it deepens your daily awareness of one core Lenten lesson:
The Lord is your shepherd. You lack nothing.